It is the oldest form of marketing humans have seen, preliminary known as storytelling & accepted as content marketing in Internet age.
What is Digital Content marketing
Using content for the purpose of marketing
Using content to build the audience that takes target audience towards buyer journey using content marketing funnel.
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing in very detailed format.
Content marketing involves creating content for the audience & distributing the content as well
We see content marketing in various forms few most seen form are article write-ups in form of blog post, images in form social media post, blog images, infographics, animated GIF& Videos.
Content marketing is immensely popular in offline & online markets. Companies big & small use Content Marketing widen the target audience & nurture them in the funnel.
Content Marketing Stats
Estimated dollar amount involved in Content Marketing: $300 Billion
60% of Marketers use content marketing in one form or the another
50% of companies use content marketing in form of blog post
55% of Digital Strategists use content marketing to optimize for Search engine marketing
70% of Content Marketers prefer quality & user experience to deliver the content
70% of Digital marketers are increasing their spending on Video based content
40% of Marketers reported increasing in budget spending
3X is approximate return on spending on content marketing
In Internet age it started with content for the website, then started spreading with the blogs, ebooks, lead magnets then on social media, further expanded in Video content – currently Internet is dominated with content in various forms, with a course of time the content on the Internet has become more qualitative & is more targeted towards specific audience with keywords or by choice on social networks.
Content marketing is part of strategy from all major corporations including Microsoft, Unilever, Cisco. PR, Social Media, PPC, all involve content marketing in some form or another.
6 Steps to Digital Content Marketing Strategy
1. Define Goal
Content marketing starts with defining your goals for your content marketing. It is very important that you clearly define which analytic metric would be ideal. Based on what stage your company or startup is, you may define a goal.
It could be traffic in form of visitors or conversion in form of subscribers, social media engagement or video views. At this stage it is easy to make a choice but once you have committed to the goal, you start allocating resources in form of time, efforts, people. It becomes harder.
a) Define north star metric you would like to go after (one big goal)
b) Define at least 4 small wins that will help you achieve your metric
Tools Recomendation : Goal Management or Project Management
2. Know your target market (audience)
Once you have goal, next most important part is clearly define your audience. This is the most integral part of planning & most marketer does not take that seriously.
We recommend you to create detailed customer avatar that will help you know your customer closely. With the help of your sheet you create a better customer messaging for your audience which can be used on blogs, social media & ads.
Ideally purpose of content marketing is create most pulling content that attracts your audience
3. Choose your main platform
Just as you define the goal – it is very important to choose your choice of platform you would prefer to build upon. We should choose the social network based on customer avatar preferences or where they hangout online.
If your audience is young – prefer Instagram, In case your customer avatar enjoys watching video, then prefer YouTube.
Choosing the platform does not mean you will not use the other platform. You will use other platforms but to distribute only.
Tools Recomendation : Social Media Management Tool
4. Now Create Content
Once you have chosen the platform now is the time to create the content. Have a full-fledged editorial calendar with clear SOP’s if you have a team to work upon the content. You should clearly define task you would like to achieve in daily-weekly format & this has to be followed with complete discipline.
Clearly know the purpose of the content is it going to be evergreen topic or engagement or event specific content. Based on that, you define your content creation with purpose.
While creating content, you need to follow few rules.
- Do keyword specific research with specific tools, use those keywords in your content
- Research to check other content & editorials that have received social likes & comes.
- While writing prefer quality
- Always proofread your content
- Keep your brand flavour in your content
- Create & plan associated assets to your content
Tools Recomendation : Content Summary Tool, Keyword Research Tool, Spelling tools
5. Distribute – Distribute
Act of promoting what you have build
Just creating will not help you, So you need to distribute the content as much as possible
You already created – why distribution.
Creating content is not enough in this internet age as media platform bombard the audience with various marketing messages. Chances are there that content may get lost, but if properly distributed they could amplify the results.
So make sure it attracts your target market
Distribute through social media, teaser videos or presentation slides, images create promotional content.
Here are 5 simple questions you need to answer which you are going for the distribution
Tools Recomendation : Social Media Content Distribution Tool
a) What form you want to distribute
You created a great content – Now It is important to re-purpose your content in various forms like pictures, social media, slides, videos, teaser content, podcast, tweets, ebooks, case studies, reports & several forms.
b) Where you want to distribute
Once you have repurpose the content, you can distribute the content in various forms of content on various platforms.
Use LinkedIn like social media platform to distribute your slides or PDF document.
We can distribute video on YouTube & Facebook.
Text based article converted in Audio & video format to distribute on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, podcasting platforms.
c) Paid Promotions strategy.
Having a paid promotion strategy can increase the reach of your content.
For the paid promotions for each content, you create have a small budget to promote & create campaigns around it.
You can start with a small budget with multiple campaigns & attract a cold audience. You can even have a re-targeting campaign for follow-up with an audience.
This strategy will unfold over time. You will find some winning campaigns that you would like to run to widen the scope of the audience. Making your content evergreen.
d) Tracking your KPI or Goals
Each content creation & distribution efforts should be tracked & monitored as per your core metric or KPI. It should serve the purpose. We should make ongoing efforts to add new channels or eliminate the channels that are not performing.
6. Collect & Build
Purpose of content marketing is to collect or build email list.
To build a list from the content proper CTA (Call to Action) should induce in the content. Purpose of CTA is guide the audience to join the list.
With email, marketing you can reach email list every week with informational content, marketing message.
Each email id has to be nurtured with proper follow up to make them a customer & loyal audience.
Some Great Content Marketing Examples
Neil Patel is top Internet marketers that uses content marketing to build list & recently it launched the Uber Suggest ( SAAS based on Search Engine Optimization) to its audience. It actively uses its blog to get an audience. It cross promotes on other social networks, which includes YouTube & Facebook.
The audience of Neil Patel is wide, which includes freelancers, agencies, big corporates.
b) Hubspot.com
HubSpot is b2b marketing agency & SAAS Software providers. It uses content marketing strategy actively. It has huge collection of content, lead magnets help to generate leads.
Digital Content Marketing Funnel
Content is ready, why one needs the content marketing funnel
Not all content is created equal
Audience at different stages of funnel consume different type of content.
An audience that has closed down on brand, is ready to buy & would consume a discount code.
Whereas the audience consuming the content like “How to “or Comparison studies is at the early stage of funnel
Both of the audience should be handled differently, they require a distinct set of nurturing, they can make this possible using content marketing funnel.
Ideally when content is created – using CTA, the audience goes to the landing page, on page it offers them valuable lead magnet & lead generation happens.
Further lead is taken towards buyers journey whereby using email nurturing sequence the buyers is move forward. Occasionally the audience is introduced to small ticket size products to make audience ready for the core offer.
Here the purpose of the nurturing is to convert cold audience to warm audience, making them aware of the brand & make them loyal customer.
If you are looking for the for content marketing agency or content marketing tools, please visit us here & if you are looking for content marketing distribution template join us here.
Recent Comments